Not That Kind of Thing
by ILoVeWicked
Summary: They're best friends. They're so close, it's no wonder people mistake them for a couple. But with Violet and Cooper, it's not that kind of thing. Oneshot. Based off the song "Not that Kind of Thing" from the musical The Wedding Singer. Hope you enjoy!


**Disclaimer: I don't own Private Practice, the Wedding Singer, or the song "Not That Kind of Thing".**

**Hey, everyone! So I'm back again for another stab at a Private Practice fic! It's my first stab at trying first person present tense as well, so hopefully I didn't butcher the format too badly. As far a background story on this goes...my district put on 'The Wedding Singer' (a great musical that never got a chance...I strongly suggest seeing it if it comes near you) and I thought this song in the show was totally adorable. Then, later that night, I was like, "OMJEEZLEPEETES! Idina's gonna be on TV in like five days!!!" and then it hit me that Violet and Cooper reminded me strangely of Julia and Robbie...ya know, the cynical, sweet best friends who everyone knows should be together but are completely oblivious to it. Thus, this fic was born! It's a kind of song-fic-ish thing...I was going to make it like a regular old songifc but the whole duet thing was too complicated for me to pull off...so I incoorperated most of the verses into the dialogues between Violet and Cooper (hence why some of the things they say rhyme...I tried my best to mix it up a little...) with the occasional lyrics thrown in. So enough of me rambling, I hope you enjoy (and review, please?!) my story! Be sure to catch Idina Menzel (the amazing [and PREGNANT! I so called it!]) Menzel on PrP!!**

**-ILoVeWicked**

**PS- I read somewhere that it's rumored that either Violet, Charlotte, or Naomi is going to die in the season finale? Does anyone know if said rumor is true, and if so, do you know who it is? (Not to be mean or anything, cause I love them all and I'd hate to lose any of them...but Charlotte would be the one I'd like to see go if I had to chose one. Maybe they could replace her w/ Idina...) Just wondering. Oh, but I hope trashy TV gossip is untrue this time around (ahem...SAVE PUSHING DAISIES!...)! **

**PSS- There is one part that is in Violet's POV...hope that avoids any confusion you may have.**

**Not That Kind of Thing**

"I don't know, I kind of like the ones with the roses. What do you think, Coop?"

I laugh, clearly scoffing, and shake my hand at her naïve excitement over picking out her wedding décor. I'm here for one reason and one reason only: to accompany her to register her and Allan for their wedding, but somehow, she's tricked me into going wedding shopping with her. Now, I'm standing here in front of a bunch of plates, and I could really care less about which ones she chooses. But she's Violet, and she's known to be a perfectionist. You pair Violet with wedding, and you've got trouble.

"Nuh, uh, Violet! We're men, and men do not like pretty little flowers on our plates! How about just going with the white ones?" I suggest, gesturing towards a very bland pair of plates. Even I know that they're the worst plate choice out there, but my stomach is grumbling madly, and at that point, I just want to move on. A nosy clerk with pointy red glasses is peeking at the two of us as Violet crinkles her nose.

"White? Ew." It's all I need to hear to assure myself that I am not getting lunch any time soon. I roll my eyes and join Violet at her side, mocking her stance of deep concentration.

"Violet, just face it, you're not going to find anything that will match that table cloth you just bought," I tell her matter-of-factly, as if I am some kind of plate guru, and I receive a playful smack on the arm from my best friend. She can barely keep a straight face as she attempts to look appalled at me.

"Excuse me? _You _told me to buy this hideous thing!" she exclaims in disbelief, shaking the bag in my face as a reminder. I shrug innocently, knowing that she can't stay mad at me forever. But she's fixed on this plate thing, so I figure it might be fun to mess with her a little.

"It was fifty-percent off!" I protest. I always thought girls liked sales. I can't see why she is getting worked up about this. Violet shakes her head, her perfect brown ringlets bouncing on her shoulders.

"Well, it was eighty-percent _ugly_!" Violet replies, her tone clearly annoyed. She sticks out her tongue at me childishly, about to turn back to her plates. I'm about to make another comment when the saleswoman, who has been watching us (and doing a poor job at hiding it), strides up behind us. She has short, gray hair, a tacky floral outfit (What is it with girls and their flowers?) and a cocky smile, as if she knows everything about us already.

"Now, kids," she says, like she's making peace between two five-year-olds butting heads on the playground, "couples always argue when they come here to register. My advice is: be _very careful_."

Both Violet and I have the same thoughts running through our heads. It's not like this is the first time for this to happen. People often mistook us for a couple. I have always assumed it was just because we were such good friends…but I often wonder: are people really oblivious to a strong, healthy friendship when they see it, or do Violet and I _look _like a couple? We open our mouths simultaneously to correct this woman, but she cuts us both off with rambling. It is all useless to me, but I can tell by the way her eyes are glazed over that Violet is taking tedious mental notes from this stranger.

"It's a tricky situation, that first fight. You have no idea how many engagements I've seen end in here over these petty arguments. Plates, napkins, _candles_…you name it, I've seen it end a perfectly good relationship. The way I look at it, just save yourselves the time and agree on disagreeing. Both wrong, both right. No harm, no fowl!" She pats Violet on the shoulder and winks. "Besides, you two seem like too good of a couple to lose it over a plate."

Violet is chomping down on her lip to keep from busting out in laughter. I choke down a snort myself. The lady's eyes are darting left to right, from me to Violet, suspecting that there is some kind of inside joke between the two of us that she cannot comprehend. Violet notices that we've been silently staring at each other with watery eyes and crooked smiles for too long and gives me a pressing look.

I step forward and clear my throat, smiling nervously at the lady. I can barely hide my smirk as I admit, "I hate to tell you, but we're not together. We're sister and brother."

The lady automatically turns purple with embarrassment. Violet is surprised by this new twist. Normally, I just tell them we're good friends and we head off on our merry way. She grins inwardly and grabs my cheek, as if I'm a baby, and wiggles it.

"And he's the slow one," she adds. She's a horrible liar, and laughter is pouring from her like water from a fire hose. I smack her hand away. The sales woman has caught onto our game and has changed her expression. Her arms are folded across her large chest and her foot is tapping impatiently.

Violet is almost a head shorter than I. I pat the top of her head gingerly, making a goofy face that she can't see, and I shoot, "She's the idiot, according to mother." By this point, the sales lady just wants us to leave. Violet rolls her eyes and takes my hand. A phony smile is painted on her face as she swings our arms back and forth.

"It takes one to know one!" she supplies sarcastically before she catches a glimpse of the lady, who looks like she is about to burst into a million flowery pieces. Violet's eyes grow wide, as if to say, "Did I do that?" and she giggles. That is something I love about her. She knows how to take a good joke, unlike Nosy Sales-Lady. We bolt off to the next shop, laughing our heads off once we're in the clearing of the old lady.

_**Tell the night to save its moonlight.  
Tell the birds not to sing.  
Tell the stars in the heavens they've been misaligned.  
'Cause it's not that kind of thing.**_

"Get these," I order, shoving a mound of fuzzy black terrycloth in Violet's direction. She catches them with disgust and examines them as if they're toxic before looking up at me with her 'You're Serious?' eyes.

"Black? I'm not going to get _black _towels, Coop! They'll clash with everything!"

"But black towels will never get dirty!" I remind her, half whining. I have still yet to be fueled with my lunch, and it had been ten stores of constant nagging and bickering since we made it out of _Plate World _alive.

Another couple strides in. They remind me of Sam and Naomi…meaning the woman was clearly the alpha-male. She is a tiny African-American woman with fierce eyes, and she is pulling her cowardly partner by the ear just to get him cooperating. I can tell he's in pain, and we share a moment of eye contact to let each other know that we're here for any support the other may need.

As I watch Violet debating over periwinkle and pink, I suddenly grow angry. My fists clench and my body starts to shake with detest for Allan. Who did he think he was, anyway? He had dated Violet for so long, he had proposed to Violet, and he said that he loved Violet…so how did that explain why he was absent from her life half the time? Apparently, pitching fancy ideas for inventions in Boca Raton is better than wedding shopping with your fiancé. This was a special time for Violet. She had been fantasizing about the day she would walk down the aisle since she could walk.

We both knew that Allan should have been the one looking at plates with Violet and not me. He had hit her harder than ever when he fled the weekend they were supposed to register for their wedding, and that pissed me off. I honestly wanted no part of this miserable marriage Vi was getting herself into. But when I saw the look of disappointment in her eyes when she asked me if I would come with her instead, how could I say no?

I often wonder: he can't possibly be spending _all _of his time in the tropics at meetings, so what did he do with his spare time? Thoughts of late night drinking and lap dances flooded my mind. I gazed over at Violet, so innocent, so blind and unknowing…yet, she was madly in love with him. If he made her happy, I was willing to accept him.

"Ooh! Look, Mookie! A sale on towels! Hold my purse for me?" The woman beside Violet who had come in earlier asks, batting her long eyelashes at her fiancé, who stiffens. Poor guy…it was bad enough his name was _Mookie_.

He holds up his hands in a desperate attempt of protest. "Crystal, baby, please…" he spots me and his voice lowers an octave. That's right, Mookie, we're men, and we don't let the ladies make us go all Tiny Tim with our voices.

"No," he says firmly.

It was a valiant effort on Mookie's behalf, but not valiant enough. Crystal never takes her gaze off of a set of emerald green towels as she whacks her man in the stomach with her purse and huffs, "I said hold it!"

Given a few moments to wheeze it off, Mookie grabbs the purse and keeps his mouth shut. I am too busy snickering at him to notice Violet creeping up against me.

"Um, Cooper? Hold my purse?" she tries, holding out the accessory towards me and batting her own eye lashes. It looks far less graceful and convincing than Crystal's eye lash batting. It almost looks like poor Vi has got something stuck in her eye.

I laugh it off with a cocky, "No-o-o!"

It was Mookie's turn to snicker as Violet jammed her own heavy bag into my stomach and imitated Crystal's, "I said hold it!" The smile never left her face. I snatched the purse from my friend, still smirking, and glared at Mookie. Crystal and Violet, however, were sending each other little giggles…like girlish high-fives.

"You get stuck with them for better…" Crystal sighs, jabbing a thumb in poor Mookie's direction. The guy is still short of breath.

"Or worse," Violet quips, shooting a glance at me. "No matter which way you stack it!" I roll my eyes and decide that it's time to make an alliance with Mookie. I send him a friendly smile and a shrug.

"It's emasculating holding a purse," Mookie grumbles toward me, careful not to set off Crystal. I, on the other hand, have strode over to Violet. I tap her shoulder, and she whirls around to spot me striking a pose in the middle of a towel shop.

"And it doesn't match my jacket," I mock as I do an even poorer imitation of the eye lash thing. Violet simply breaths out a gorgeous smile and plops more shopping bags in my arms. I groan.

"I'm on to your evil scheme, Violet Turner! I completely understand it now!" I shout after her as she waltzes off in the direction of perfumes. It's like stepping into the threshold of the underworld, but I make it through as I try to keep up with Violet's quick strides. She has completely passed the perfume, and I know in that instant that she's got something clear in my mind of what she wants to look at next.

"I shop, you carry," Violet calls over her shoulder. A few ladies getting manicures stare up at us and smile that same all-knowing smile that the plate sales-woman had been wearing, and I quicken my pace to walk beside her.

"So I do all the work, and you make out like a bandit."

She stops abruptly for a moment and fakes that she is giving her plan some serious thought. Then she simply shrugs and smiles. "It's true," she says, sounding like a Valli Girl. God, I just want to…

"No, it's scary," I mutter, trying to shift the weight of the bags to my other shoulder. What did she buy? Los Angeles? Violet feigns shock and shoves me playfully in the direction of the junior clothes store _Hollister_, and the weight of the bags nearly send me tumbling over completely. Violet grabs my arm in the nick of time, before my head becomes one with the cropped jackets.

"No, _you're _scary!" she insists.

"No, _you _are!"

"No, _you_!"

We're having a blast, and all I keep thinking is what a day Allan has missed.

_**Tell the night to save its moonlight.  
Tell the birds not to sing.  
Tell the stars in the heavens they've been misaligned.  
'Cause it's not that kind of thing.**_

_**True, there are times  
**__**When her eyes meet mine and linger there  
Maybe a bit too long**_

She's snorting up a storm, and I've got ice cream on my nose. We're those annoying people in the mall who you want to throw out but you can't since America's a free country. I've got my food, and she's got her plates. We've both become less like monsters and more like clowns at that point.

She is laughing like a hyena over some stupid joke I made about seven, eight, and nine, and for a moment, her subtle blue eyes meet my own. Time stops around me, and everything out of the corners of my eyes is blurred, but her face, her beautiful face, is in clear clarity. I feel something odd run down my spine, and it makes me shudder.

I think about the lady in the plate shop for a moment. _'Besides, you two seem like too good of a couple to lose it over a plate…"_

_"Too good of a couple…"_

_"A couple…"_

And then it hits me. I don't want to be the one who goes shopping for towels and plates and thank-you cards with Violet as the dorky best friend. I wanted to be the fiancé who flipped out over the dang plate! More than anything, I wanted to be Allan, and for as long as I have known Violet, it has been that way. Allan or no Allan. Heck, I would have preferred to have been Mookie if it meant that after all the laborious shopping was done, Violet would be my bride.

_**And I wonder  
Is there something hidden in his stare?**_

Seven…eight…nine! Get it?! Cause seven _ate _nine! Though Coop claims it's an old, worn-out joke, I still manage to find it hilarious. Maybe it's just the high this great day has given me.

I had thought wedding shopping without my future husband would have been pointless, boring…anything that wasn't the experience Cooper was allowing me. Now I'm still laughing over the joke, he's laughing at me because I find it so funny, and I'm having one of the best times of my life. I look up at him, blob of vanilla ice cream still cold and fresh on his nose, and I'm still laughing. But I stop as soon as his end of the laughter stops.

He is staring at me strangely. His eyes are filled with thought…and even a hint of…lust, and it's then I notice that he really has a handsome face. His jaw line is perfectly straight, with hints of furry stubble sprinkled upon it. His nose and mouth are chiseled as if he were a Greek God. He wore a smile line for every wrinkle I had in my own face (which was a lot, sadly). And those eyes…don't even get me started on those round, sweet eyes…

Was it just pre-wedding jitters, or did Cooper look strangely appealing? No...nevermind that. Cooper has never been a Calvin Klein model to me, much to the dismay of his internet friends.

There were points in the day, while he was whining, where I wondered why the heck Coop had agreed to come with me. After all, I knew how much he hated shopping. But as we sat in the food court mocking the crazy plate woman and Mookie and squishing ice cream on each other's faces, I realized that he had done all of this today just to keep me smiling. He knew how hurt I was by the fact that Allan wasn't by my side, and he was there for me.

He always had been there for me, whether I wanted him there or not.

I stop. As I look into his chocolate brown eyes, and I think about what that lady had said to us in the plate store:

_'Besides, you two seem like too good of a couple to lose it over a plate…"_

_"Too good of a couple…"_

Couple?

I had never thought about it, but people we didn't know often walked by us and smiled admirily. I had always wondered what made them so happy. Did they think Cooper and I were…? But we're just… Did Cooper think…?

I stare down at my engagement ring to break the gaze. It is huge, with hundreds of shimmering diamonds surrounding one single, gigantic rock and blinding me.

No. Cooper and I are just friends. I've probably got a huge piece of lettuce in my teeth or something and he has that weird look in his eyes because he's trying to figure out how to tell me without hurting me. The wedding ring on my finger glints again, and I daydream for a moment about the ring on my finger being from the man in front of me…but I quickly erase the thought from my mind, feeling silly for doing so.

Cooper's the guy who I compete in crossword puzzle competitions with and steal sodas from, _not _the guy who I snuggle up to and tell him that I love him. That was what I have Allan for. I was going to marry Allan in a few months, and I was going to love Allan.

Right?

_**No, I couldn't be more wrong.**_

There's a subtle change in her expression, and for a moment, a catch her moment of epiphany. Is she thinking what I'm thinking? I'm half expecting her to whip out her phone and call off her engagement right there. Then, just as quickly as I had spotted it, it disappears and is replaced with a look of overwhelming sadness, which she can't hide so easily from me. I realize that she was not thinking the same thing I was thinking, she never had…and as of May, she never would. She was probably just thinking of Allan, vacationing glamorously in Boca, while she got stuck here with old, boring, dorky Cooper.

She shakes her head and swallows hard before smiling at me again. I can tell it's fake, but I don't dare tease her about it.

"C'mon," she says, her voice cracking softly, waving me in the direction of the bridal shop. "There's just one more thing I want to check out…and then we can go home." I bet she thinks that's all I want, when I would actually trade every ice cream cone just to have a few more minutes with her.

_**Tell the night  
to save it's moonlight.  
Tell the birds  
not to sing.  
Tell the stars in the heavens they've been misaligned.  
'Cause it's not that kind.  
No it's not that kind.  
No it's not that kind of thing.**_

In a sea of white and sparkles and lace, we both spot it at the same time. It is quite simple, just a plain, satiny white gown with a flowing trail and a hint of glitter around the perimeter of the bottom of the gown; it hugs the curves of the perfect mannequin. Cue the _Hallelujah_ chorus.

Violet clasps her hands together. Tears are glistening in her eyes. I can see it in her features, all of her childhood dreams were coming true right in the middle of the crowded bridal shop. All the towel shopping and bag carrying in the world was worth that priceless reaction she had over her dress. "Omigod, Cooper! That's the dress!" She points a shaky finger in that direction and sniffles. "That's the dress I was meant to get married in!"

She darted up to it and stood behind the mannequin, her body fitting the silhouette precisely. She gazes down at the dress and runs a hand over the fabric. Her ring is glaring in my face, but my eyes are fixed on Violet's face as it changes from one ecstatic grin to another.

She throws me a curveball when she looks up at me. "Do you think I'll look alright?" she asks, a typical woman question, which I am not expecting Violet, who is never trite, to ask. She's the woman who comes to work with zit cream on her face and still manages to take every guy's breath away. I don't think looking okay is an issue...at all.

I pretend to give it severe thought, even though I already know the answer. I can see her now, flawless and glowing in that very dress. Even though it's not Allan I see her walking toward, I smile and I say:

"You'll look beautiful."

Because with Violet and I, it's just not that kind of thing.

**Review? :D**


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